Enlight21

Author: Gladwyn d'Souza | Category: Environment | Food | Health | Date: 02-20-2020

What is the opposite of the Green New Deal? The dirty polluting economy we take for granted-

It’s impossible to renounce the fossil fuel world. The road we travel on, the vegetables delivered on that road, the equipment used to farm the vegetables and transport the workers, the light switch we flip to flood our rooms with light, the plate we eat on, the shoes and clothes we wear- all belong to the fossil fuel economy. Last week I went to buy a pair of shoes. There were no all leather shoes at the store anymore- though they too would have been transported to the store with fossil fuels. Instead fossil fuels had penetrated the shoes themselves with man made soles, liners and tops. There were more faux leather shoes for sale that mixed leather with man made components. It’s almost impossible to find all cotton clothes as fossil fuel based nylons and stretch materials make up a some or all the components of what we wear today.

The goods and services of the “general economy” are the dirty polluting economy that creates and maintains climate change. It’s effect is directly measured in the Keeling Curve which is currently around 415 ppm of CO2. The Keeling curve naturally is reflect by the stock market! This is because the general economy is the extractive economy of fossil fuels though oddly we cherish the former and deplore the latter. The better we do in the economy the larger our carbon footprint. It takes money to buy and burn fossil fuels after all. Naturally our per capita income and green house gas footprints are among the largest in the world.

The worst aspects of the fossil fuels economy such as flying and eating meat require tremendous infrastructure and government bureaucracies to maintain. Take the expansion of the airport in San Jose for example. The Environmental Impact Report admits it will make a joke of the San Jose Climate Action Plan but explains that there are NO alternatives to the emissions growth that the expansion represents. Among environmentalist that eat red meat the option is to go for grass fed beef. But 90% of American grass fed beef is imported from countries where tribes are being exterminated so that their rain forests can be torched to grow beef.

These bureaucracies are maintained by our taxes and drive the bond market. Most cities do not have  a sustainability coordinator.  The next time you go to your city to beg for a sustainability coordinator just put that request in perspective. The persons you are talking to are responsible for the emissions that are toasting the planet. They are searching within the dirty polluting budget for scraps of money to begin addressing the problem. Without a restructuring of how public money is spent by a Green New Deal we have the dirty polluting economy of fossil fuels. And the next time someone brags about the environmental stewardship of some department just point them to the unrelenting rise in the Keeling Curve. 

About: Gladwyn d'Souza